As my fingers close around her shoulder – so thin now, so frail – the world turns white. Open eyes, close eyes – no difference. They burn anyway. The inferno swirls around her upraised arm, pouring endlessly into Kaishen's blade.
Pain, then beyond it. My fingers are burning upon her skin; flesh, bone, gone in a flash. In my skull, a stampede, a wild buzzing that grows louder and louder. Can't think. Can't feel. Only one thought left, the lowest of the low, baser than instinct.
Run!
Run!
But Kathanhiel isn't moving. Her voice, speaking so very faintly:
'Help...me...'
During those nights on the highway, as the six Apex candidates had her immolated, I was cowering in Oon'Shang's shadow and dozing off. When she found me in the aftermath, under the rain of ash, she should have struck me and called me a worthless scum. That's what I deserved. Instead, she gave me the Bane of Dragons.
When Talukiel had slit my throat at Iborus, it was supposed to be the end. As he charged at her – the toughest opponent she has ever faced – she threw Kaishen away to keep me alive. What else did I do that night? Lying on a bed. Riding a horse. Watching people give their lives.
And now, at the final stretch, all I can think of is running away.
No.
I refuse.
She's burning. I am too. Kaishen is bucking wildly, as if trying to flee from her grip. Reaching up against the intolerable heat, I put my hands around hers.
The heat. The weight. The scouring of everything inside my body, the influx of a thousand red-lettered words smeared all over my head. Let it go let it go it screams – no, me. I'm screaming.
Kathanhiel's knees buckle. No, she can't fall now, not when her wish is right here, right in front of her. Got to take more of the heat. Got to tell Kaishen to put more weight on me instead –
NO! ARE YOU CRAZY?! DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!
Am I laughing out loud? I am, aren't I. That thought is so childishly inept.
'Is this what you want, Kaishen?' I yell at the sword. Everything's so bright, so loud. Can't even hear myself. 'For Kathanhiel to die the same way you did?! Then give me the heat and let her live!'
Ah, it listens.
My body, ripped apart. Rutherford's flame turns it to ash. Then, in that very instant, Kaishen puts it back together. Incineration. Restoration. Dying and returning over and over again. Of course there would be cracks on the skin – it's like putting together a shattered vase. Cracks are a part of the process.
The heat. Unbearable. How many times have I said that? How many times have I said that then bore it anyway?
Kathanhiel is amazing, to have withstood this purgatory of death and rebirth all by herself. There are no ghosts of past heralds coming out; they are nowhere to be seen. Ah, I get it now – that's why she calls it Kaishen, so in moments like this she would not be alone.
But she's alone no longer. I am here.
'She's not alone!!'
Am I thinking or yelling? Screaming or whispering?
'I'm here! I will always be here!'
Now this is a painting of heroes: two little humans, bathed in the ocean of fire spilling from the dragon's jaws, their hands entwined upon the magical blade and raising it high in unwavering defiance, declaring to all forces that be their will to live.
An eternity passes.
Then, at last, the great light begins to subside.
In our hands Kaishen is a galaxy of stars, as if all the light this world has to offer have been gathered inside this metal stick.
'Kastor?'
Kathanhiel turns to me, her eyes blazing. Her body's glow almost matches that of the sword; her skin, radiant like crystallised fire, is shrouded in a web of blinding white. Glittering flakes, like shards of silver, are cascading from her back.
No, not this again, not yet –
Mustering up a smile takes all the courage in the world. 'I...I think we did it.'
The Kalarinth Citadel is scoured clean. Not one speck of dust remains of the great hoard that had this placed suffocated. Before us, smoke bellowing from every orifice on its head, Rutherford is collapsed onto the charred floor like a tortured corpse, shrunken, the lustre gone from its scales. Its voice has become mumbling and indistinct:
'Thus ends the contest of fire. Now, return upon me that which was given, and let there be peace for an instant.'
Its eyes, oozing white pus from the corners, are brimming with Kaishen's light. The Apex seems entranced. So quiet now its laborious breathing, almost entirely gone.
I try to walk forward and find my legs trapped knee-deep inside the floor. Can't think about that right now; Kaishen is getting heavier by the second and Kathanhiel has closed her eyes. Bits of cinder are shedding all over her face, as if...as if she's falling apart –
No! Don't think that! She's still breathing, still breathing!!
'What is this all for?' My voice...like a dozen people yelling at once through a metal tube. Nothing makes sense. Why did it turn out like this? Why is Kathanhiel dying in exchange for killing a monster that can't be killed, when her life is worth a million times more than this pitiful, miserable creature, whose only desire is for us to kill it?! I don't understand. I don't understand!
'Who came up with this stupid game?' I yell at Rutherford's withered face. 'Was it Ush'Ra? Did she make you live forever so people would have to come and kill you over and over again? Why would she make an arrangement like that? Tell me! You know! You've lived through it all you've seen everything so tell me why she is dying now just so you can come back ten years later to do the same thing all over again! Tell me!!'
The great hall rings out with my pitiful scream – 'tell me...tell me...tell me...' – like it's the cruellest joke in the world. Silence follows it.
Didn't think Rutherford was going to respond; thought it would just lay there and die because that's obviously the only thing it cares about. But then –
'I cannot recall.'
Its voice is low, sorrowful.
Then I recall what he had said on the highway, and mimicking its pretentious riddle-filled speech has never been less satisfying: '"Memories, fear, anger, love...the winds of the mountains have carried them away, never to return. In their place there is only The Dark."'
Smoke plumes from its mouth in a weak puff. A sad excuse for laughter.
'To foster the seed of fire, to sustain it unto eternity – I know not why I am thus compelled, when I have no need of all that be. The heralds are creatures of flesh ephemeral, such frail constructs, yet when the Dark is nigh they come before me, always. Always. In this wretched void they are stars.'
'So games we play, and a pact is made: fire unto the herald, and rest unto the restless. Peace is thus granted to all.'
Then it looks at me expectantly, as if I'm meant to agree.
What a blatant liar.
'What are you even talking about? There is no pact! We have to kill you! We don't kill you you kill us!' There is little time; Kathanhiel is slipping against me and if she doesn't get help soon –
Soon?! You're in the middle of nowhere! Help?! Just cut the dragon's head and get out of here!!
Kaishen, as if responding to that thought, drags my arms forward in a brilliant arc. As soon as it did that Kathanhiel begins to fall, for her hand is still attached to the grip. There is so much cindery dust on her back – can't brush them off, can't, if I do she might shatter like glass –
Hands still over hers, I lower my arms over her shoulders to trap her between them. And now if she falls, we fall together.
I look up at Rutherford again. No more arguing. Arguing isn't going to solve anything, the same way that, back at Iborus, Rukiel and Tamara telling Kathanhiel to get over herself wasn't going to magically return things to the way they were. I can yell at it, scream at it, stab it hundred times between the eyes and nothing will change. Kathanhiel would still want to come back here to kill the next Apex, and Rutherford would still play its games and beg to die. An unbreakable cycle of misery.
No one should live like this.
'The Dark is the emptiness, isn't it?'
I watch Rutherford's eyes narrow.
'How long have you lived like this, forgotten your purpose and unable to die? No wonder you want to destroy the world – why not? It's something to pass the time. A game to play, like you said. But it's not just you that feels this way...not just...' Ah...here we go. 'I know what it's like. Before Kathanhiel found me there was no purpose in my life. A lot less exciting than your circumstance, sure, but the feeling's the same; that if I could just lie down and die the world wouldn't blink an eye, and that had somehow seemed perfectly fine. It wasn't fine. I hated feeling like that all the time: the sun always shines so brightly yet everywhere I look there are only puddles of Dark. I never want to step in them yet they are always in the way. Always. Couldn't walk two feet without drowning.'
I can feel Kathanhiel's gaze; she has stirred. Rutherford is listening, its eyes locked onto mine.
'I would like to think that Kathanhiel was the one who saved me from that but...I had to sign up first. No recruiter came to my door. I snuck my application into the courier's bag when he passed by my house. It was a far-fetched thing – no one's ever looked at me– but she did. She looked at me. Do you know what I felt, when I met her for the first time? It's was like I've been reaching out all this time, all this time, trying to get away from the Dark, wanting to not feel that purposeless dread anymore and suddenly she is there to catch my hand, acknowledging that yes, it was right to have struggled all this time, and yes, I am allowed to want to live.
'You're so much luckier than I, Rutherford. You've had a purpose all along. I keep thinking, Ush'Ra was a giant, so why would she make a sword for humans? Why did she have it interact with dragon fire, the very thing you say you have to preserve? There is a purpose for you, O great dragon – I don't know what it is, but it can't be spreading aimless chaos in the Realms. It can't be. You know if you kill us all you would really be alone. Forever.
'I get it, the longer you live the tougher it is for your body to hold back the Dark, and you want to die so you can start over fresh – have a chance to feel better. But this...nihilism...is not a solution, and you know it. You have to reach out first. "Better" doesn't come around on its own.'
Kaishen is burning up my hand, the heat crawling up into the back of my eyeballs and staying there. The weight, oh Maker the weight, if it wasn't for Kathanhiel's hand beneath mine I wouldn't be standing at all.
Have to finish talking. Have to make Rutherford understand.
'I have a proposal. I know you're eager for this to end. Kathanhiel too – no matter what I say she's going to kill you, because it is her purpose.' She's still looking at me but I can't – can't look back. 'But I know you remember the last herald. You remember Kaishen. So please...please, when you come back again, in a different body, with a different name, please remember what I have said, and go find out what you have forgotten – what Ush'Ra had meant for you to do. I'll help you. I'll come to you and if you've forgotten about it I'll remind you, and if you want only to die again I'll be up for another contest, but please, please, for your own sake, make an attempt. Try to remember. Try to get the Dark out of your head. If you keep trying and trying and trying, one day a herald will come...and she will set you free.'